How to Solve Mission Critical Problems with Micro Focus Network Monitoring System?

Pranav Mehta

Recently, we got an opportunity to work with a global high-tech company, who are one of the key players in area of Aerospace & Defense.

Serviceberry Technologies was chosen to implement Network Monitoring System (NMS) to monitor their highly sophisticated security system which they had developed for one of the largest oil & gas multinational corporations listed in FORTUNE Global 500.

This highly sophisticated security system is capable to monitor the movements of high-speed objects approaching the Oil Rigs’ at Sea.

Micro Focus NNMi was selected for a PoC to be configured to monitor all the devices supporting the security system.

During the PoC of the security system & the NMS, we realized that few of the critical component did not support SNMP or rather there was no integration with 3rd monitoring solutions. However, the component OEM were quick to respond. After few rounds of discussion with us, a SNMP agent was developed for the appliance & a standard MIB file was developed – which was tested & fine-tuned.

Though NMS was a small part of the overall solution, it played a very critical role in the success of the PoC & later for the production release.

HOW DOES THE WHOLE SITUATION WORK?

Of the many components of the security system, the Radar & Camera are the most critical. The Camera is a very powerful & with visibility of up-to 30-40 Kilometers i.e. 24.5 Miles.

Once the Radar detects any fast-moving objects (Ships, Boat, etc), the Camera gets into action by tracking its position.

While the Camera follows the object – The Radar picks up the unique ID of the ship or the boat & notifies the central system, which in-turn accesses the Marine Traffic movement from the AIS (Automatic Identification System) to retrieve all the details about the ship/boat (Name, Owner, Country, Captain, etc.). This information is tagged on the map for NOC.

To minimize the malfunctioning of the security system, all the possible failure points were well thought thorough by the global high-tech company.

Here are few examples:

As there are lot of birds near the Rigs at Sea & Shore, the Video unit has.

Wiper for cleaning the lens
A backup water tank

This takes care of droppings from the birds & also water on the lenses due to high humidity or rain.

To detect high speed moving objects at night, the Video is supported by:

Thermal Imager
A backup power supply

Malfunction of all the above units & many more (Acoustic hailing, Spot Light, etc.) is captured via custom monitoring policies from Micro Focus NNMi.

For all of us at Serviceberry, this was an extremely exciting project which not only empowered us to show what we can do but also improved our knowledge and understanding of Aero and Defence systems.